5 New Year’s Resolutions For Entrepreneurs And CMOs

A New Year’s resolution is a promise a person makes at the starts of the new year. Regardless of what resolution you make, the goal is to improve life and business in the coming year. Following are the top 5 New Year’s resolutions any entrepreneur, executive or business owner should aspire to make in the year ahead to have a most productive and successful 2017:

Make a vow to be uncomfortable!

Most of us find comfort an easy place to be, but comfortability equals complacency which is often the tipping point toward failing or becoming ordinary. In 2017, assess where you are at comfort wise and make a list of three things you can do quickly and easily in the first half of the year to push yourself to try new things outside your comfort level that might make you a stronger professional or give you a different POV that can sharpen your business. Take a social media class. Explore a different executive track. For example if you are in operations, think about customer relationships through a marketing lens. Learn to cook to flex your creative muscle. Just do things out of your “ordinary” to become as “extraordinary” as you can be.

Don’t just be different. Think different.

Steve Jobs invented the think different mantra long ago and it still holds as true today as it did years ago. Why? Because it’s way more than a great marketing slogan. It’s a great call to action for how innovators should behave daily to win. In the year ahead, dare to think differently. Embrace your inner maverick to color outside the lines. Do not just break the rules–shatter them. Today being successful is about finding new means to connect and engage in ways that make you stand out. This is true no matter what industry you play in, so dare to be different in the year ahead and think of new ways to do old things.

Embrace Reverse Mentorship

In today’s environment great ideas can come from anyone at anytime, anywhere. This notion disrupts the traditional idea that mentorship should only occur top down. 360 mentorship is the wave of the future where the smartest leaders embrace knowledge both top down and bottom up. Make your 2017 about learning everywhere as you’ll be surprised how much you up your performance by improving your understanding of the way those different than you think, socialize and innovate

Make 2017 the year you shift from ME to WE

Success in the year ahead around profit, purpose, creativity, innovation, learning and disruption will come from one place and one place only and that is an ability to embrace collaboration. So in 2017 look to push your vantage point from what you can accomplish for you to what you and others can accomplish to benefit each other. Work as hard as you can to embody the idea that we are all better in service of the collective we than the singular me.

Live Your Story

Many people start the year out figuring out how to live up to the expectations and dreams others have set for them or the ones that are viewed as the “norm.” The new normal is that there is no normal. Opportunities today are boundless and anyone, anywhere can have an idea and leverage technology as the great equalizer to share it with the rest of the world. So, CARPE DIEM! Make 2017 the year you seize the day, write your own story and then go out and live it! And while you’re at it, recognize storytelling as a vital business competency required for success in anything you may do.